Just what I need, more computers

Bought a Macintosh today. Actually, I bought a couple - but one might end up with Geoff. They are quite elderly machines, but still look cool in that Mac way. At the moment they are running a version of Unix, which number one son quite likes. I've no idea what we are going to use them for, but the price was very nice and you can't have too many computers, right?

Also fell of the internet today (but at the time I didn't know why). All the machines in my office, including the departmental forum, became unplugged when the network port they were connected to failed. This means a blog and email free weekend. Which should be quite relaxing in a disconnected kind of way.

 

And so to Friday....

After the excitement of Thursday admissions it is back to what passes for normal on Friday. Spent the afternoon writing some code to read diary entries in a smart phone. (nearly put dairy there, that would have been fun..). I've also been working on some big scrolly stuff for the Smartphone which I'll post later, probably on Interesting Systems. Oh, and as to the Games Programming with Cheese, I've not forgotten about that, it is just that there may be some major developments on that front, and I've paused distribution for a while.

Tesco delivered a single banana today. We've been using their internet shopping for a while now, and it certainly beats traipsing round the supermarket. However, you have to make sure you get the quantity right. I meant to order six of the things for the week, but along comes a single banana, wrapped in its own little bag. When I check back to the order I find that I have indeed ordered exactly one. Which is fair enough I suppose. For some reason the rest of the family find this hilarious. Next week we are getting fifty....

I've been thinking about a time when there will be pieces of wood, or metal, attached to walls and maybe even free standing on which we could place things. Or is this just a shelf fulfilling prophecy?

 

The Admissions Day Experience....

The Open Day season is now in full swing, each week people travel to Hull from all over the country to take part in the "Computer Science Admissions Afternoon Experience" (tm). Today all the jokes seemed to go down OK, even the X-Ray eyes one. I got asked a really scary (and sensible) question by one of the attendees:

"What is the unique thing about your course, as compared with other universities?"

Hmm. What a good question. We are very proud of the quality of our provision, in terms of what we do and how we manage it. The QAA (who manage the quality of this kind of thing for the government) really like what we do as well - so this is not just us saying it. We also take accreditation and professionalism very seriously. And we care a lot about the students and making sure we do right by them. Oh, and Hull is the only place which has me working for it......

 

A new toy please .. and Gone Phishing

I want one of these. Now.

And now for something frightening. I got a notification of a vulnerability in Windows Internet Explorer. So I went on to www.windowsupdate.com to see if there were any security updates outstanding for my machine (you should do this from time to time to make sure that your copy of XP is up to date). In my haste I mistyped the name as www.wndowsupdate.com (missing out the i). I was kind of surprised to get sent to a site which offered me a chance to download the GAIN software (a particularly nasty kind of spyware which I would advise you all to avoid). The side looked a lot like an update site, but was missing the Microsoft logo. To my mind this is an obvious attempt to trick people into downloading stuff believing it to be a proper update site. I've come across it before, if you haven't - beware. The problem is that it is very difficult to be completely assured that a site is valid. Duplicating official emails and web sites to try and get details from you (a technique called Phishing) is on the increase at the moment. Your best bet is to use something like Google to search for the site name and see if it comes up in any reports about the address you are using. One piece of good news, the google people seem to be aware of this kind of typing problem, the addresses www.gogle.com and www.gooogle.com both send you to the proper place (although after three o's it starts getting a bit dodgy....)

 

Bearer of Bad Tidings

I hate telling people they've failed. Fortunately it doesn't happen that often, and when it does it is very rarely the end of the road since it usually only means that resits are required. But I still hate doing it. We are dishing out semester one results at the moment and, since we have to draw a line somewhere, this means that some folk are finding out that they have not managed to pass. I've been known to fail the odd exam in my time, and I remember what it feels like. The good news is that I've only had to speak to a very few people today, and everyone I have spoken to will pass their resits (as long as they put in the appropriate revision and spend some time working through past papers and getting feedback from us). But it still hurts.

On a lighter(?) note, have a go at this test that Paul sent me and see if you can get better than my score (6 out of 10).

 

Stay at Home

Stayed at home today waiting for the washing machine to arrive. Which it did, at just about the right time. Then had some fun and games with the plumbing in. Water is OK, but it must be kept in it's proper place, i.e. inside the pipe. Got this sorted and now we can wash our clothes again. In between I did some work on the Virtual Machines module in the .NET Postgraduate course. I take over from Peter in a couple of weeks time and so it would probably be nice if I had some slides and stuff to talk from.

This evening I've been fiddling with the logo for the Preston Foster appreciation society. You wouldn't believe how many fonts there are in Windows. Now I could make this a democratic process, put up a few designs and have a vote on the one most appreciated. I could then incorporate all suggestions into a final design which we could discuss on a thread in a forum somewhere. Or I could just say: "This is what it will look like as the small embroidered logo on a standard sweatshirt" and then see how many folk want one. Let me know if you do, and I'll do boring things like get prices etc etc. If nobody wants one, well I'm going to go for it anyway....

If you are not sure about this Preston Foster stuff, take a look here.

 

XBOX Sunday

Lots of important things to do today. So I spent my time playing Dead or Alive on the XBOX. This must have slipped past me first time round, I remember buying it when the machine came out but I never seemed to play it much. It really is great fun, and the graphics are amazing. One of the protagonists, Brad Wong, does all his fights in a drunken stupor which is very funny to watch (but not so amusing when he throws you across the room into the wall). You can probably pick this game up at a very low price now, and I would recommend it. Two player is good too, but not against someone who can do it - like number one son for example. Oh, and if you do buy it - take the time to read the descriptions of the various characters in the instruction book. They are hilarious. As in:

Hayate is the brother of Kasumi and Ayanne and also the 18th leader of the "Mugen Tensin" style. He was the subject of DOATEC's experimental superhuman project (Project Epsilon), in which he lost his memory. But, in the last tournament he recovered his memory and was officially ordained as a member of the Mugen Tensin style. He is now set to enter DOA again in order to defeat Genra, the superhuman created as a puppet of DOATEC's Project Omega.

Or, as I put it. Yellow button punch, Red button kick. And when the going gets tough press them all at once....

My hero